New York, NY – The failure of Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and his Senate Republicans to consider and publicly support a petition by Rules Committee members to have a public hearing on Governor Cuomo’s Redistricting Reform bill is a censorious action that proves they have no real interest allowing a public debate on the issue.

Despite more than 30 Republicans signing the Koch Pledge last summer to move forward on reform issues, failure of the Senate GOP to even allow a public hearing demonstrates that they believe in a tyrannical majority that uses censorship to avoid being held accountable for their commitments.

Skelos and other Republicans need to immediately and publicly voice their legitimate concerns about the bill, otherwise they need to allow a public hearing and allow the bill to move forward to a vote.

Hiding behind last year’s Democratic inaction on redistricting issue while they were in the majority is no excuse for stifling public debate on an issue that is critical to change how Albany operates.

We continue to urge Governor Cuomo to start using some of his personal political capitol to move this issue forward as I stated in a release last week.